I don’t believe the term “weenies” is in general circulation these days but whatever you call them, we’ve still got a bunch.

Bonus: From an alert colleague, the annual pre-commencement changing of the lightbulbs in Duncan. I promised not to make an engineer joke and I will stick to that. You can go ahead and make one of your own though.

Count me in that “Typical Rice Student” group. To me, the cartoon implies that the wienies did not have to study much to be super prepared for finals. I studied a lot, but it did not help me score any 1s, except for the one hour freshman history course AROTC students took, along with Military Science, in the mid 50s, in lieu of one of the usual three hour history courses.

I recall seeing a discussion some time ago, possibly on the “Let’s be honest …” Facebook group, that included references that noted how/when it came to be deleted from the Rice lexicon due to its non-PC connotation.

With regard to wienie: I remember my wife Helen asking one of our student friends who was in total panic about all the work he had to do at the end of the semester, “Why do you wait until the last moment to do the work? Why don’t you just do it as it comes along?” His response, “What? And ruin the whole semester?” Clearly not a wienie.

I’m curious … does Rice own that spider-like red bucket-boom device, and use it frequently in/around other buildings? Or does Rice rent it only when needed? (Or it belongs to an out-sourced maintenance company Rice uses?)

How is the device brought into the building? I see that it can fold up into a compact volume, but does it have wheels … or put onto some sort of dolly?

I remember the term gnome, and we referred to the Cushman carts as “gnome carts”. While the term is obviously not PC, I remember it pretty much applied to any member of Physical Plant, no matter their color or stature. I think it also carried a connotation of “magically appearing and disappearing and keeping things working behind the scenes”. I had a number of friends among the Physicsl Plant, and Housing folks, and they all cared about Rice very much. The work they do IS magical.

I’m sure these terms have a variety of nuanced meanings, but for me, a weenie wasn’t necessarily a brilliantly successful student. He or she was sort of a nebbish, who seemed to get lost in his or her special academic interests to the detriment of overall academic brilliance. Library rats come to mind. Maybe this is unfathomable in today’s world where students are focused on grades and achievement, but back in my day, there were people who got lost in their intellectual interests. (The outcome wasn’t always good.)

Yes, that’s it! That’s perfect! That’s what I was — a library rat! I still am. When I go to work I work in the back room of the archives. That outcome was a reasonably good one but I do worry about what will happen when I retire.
Thanks, C Kelly!